It is over 100 degrees outside today, and the cook here at Lutheran Recipes has put up the ladle, taken off her apron, and turned off the oven. No more cooking today. I’m sitting down with iced tea and Lutheran prayer bars, and I am taking a break.
While I dedicate this blog almost exclusively to recipes, Today I include some notes regarding a publication of poetry by Kirby Olson, the self proclaimed Lutheran Surrealist.
Yes, I have many interests in life, not just cooking, although I do confess to being quirky.
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Waiting for the Rapture, by Kirby Olson
Persistencia Press, 2006
“Is it true that I like to confess?”
The opening sentence of the first poem in this first collection of poetry, by Kirby Olson, sets the tone for this journey, for this collection is a touching confession of Olson’s faith. The cover of the chapbook plainly lays that out, with nothing more than drawing of a cross and the author’s name below it. Interestingly, Olson places the title of the book inside the front cover, perhaps to point out that Christ comes first.
Currently Olson is a professor of philosophy and literature at SUNY-Delhi, and, as his chapbook informs us, he studied with Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, and Ed Sanders at Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado.
When I received the book in June, I planned to use it as an opportunity to become better educated in the poetry of Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Marianne Moore, among others. Olson makes frequent reference to them on his blog. My knowledge of their work is limited, and I expected Olson’s poetry to include many literary allusions. I confess I consider it audacious of me to review the poetry of a literature professor. I cannot speak to the form, style, or genre of his poetry, yet I do know what I took away from this lovely collection. So this is what I pass on to the audience, my own understanding of what I read.
While I was working on the review, I happened across this comment by Olson on the very first post of his blog, Lutheran Surrealism:
“Andrew,
The order of my introduction into Lutheran surrealism was like this: I was raised in a Lutheran church but rebelled at age 12, and never went back. Then, about four years ago when I was 42, my daughter was baptized in a Lutheran church in a tiny village in Finland. I wept uncontrollably for about an hour as I heard those childhood hymns being sung.”
After I read this, Waiting for the Rapture took on new meaning for me. I set aside studying Corso, et al, and the poetry became a roadmap of Olson’s 30 year journey back to his childhood faith, and the miraculous road he travels upon now. Grand themes of faith, redemption, miracles, forgiveness, mortality and eternal life came to life in vignettes of small epiphanies.
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“For we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come”
Hebrews 13:14
Olson opens his book with this verse from the New Testament, and uses scripture only one other time. This particular choice left me puzzled. The Book of Hebrews has no definitively known author, and no definitively known audience. Biblical scholars generally accept the author directed this epistle to Jewish Christians in Rome, who faced persecution under Nero. The letter admonishes the Jewish Christians not to deny their Christian faith by acting according to their Jewish customs to escape persecution.
The comment to Andrew from Olson’s blog continues:
“I’m supposed to have a novel come out sometime in late autumn dealing with this conversion. I don’t know if the surrealists will read it or whether the Lutherans will read it. I’m waiting to see. You need two legs to walk, and so… I think you need two faiths to write a novel.”
While the verse itself speaks to eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, I wonder if Olson still searches to know himself, and to understand 30 years of denial of his Lutheran heritage, a heritage and faith he unabashedly proclaims on his blog today. I wonder if Olson still searches to know his audience. Is it Lutheran or Surrealist? Hebrews presents the question: “can one be Christian without fully denying Judaism?” Waiting for the Rapture presents the question: “can one be Lutheran without fully denying Surrealism?”
The first eleven poems led me on a stark and lonely journey. The people in these first poems are nameless and unidentified, except for the author. They are simple minded suburbanites, or grieving widows, or criminals. I questioned whether Olson was speaking to the period of his life during which he rejected the church. I came to believe I held the correct interpretation.
“Things don’t go as well as hound dogs
Chasing prisoners in the evening”
Evening
“Has nothing
But black-shawl
Widows weeping
Over the moribund
Aegean.
Cities of Miraculous Stones
Some people are as simple as an egg,
They do not turn in to a chicken,
They are just an egg, in no way nascent,
such people populate the suburbs.
There is no way to talk to them
& nothing can be done for them.
Simply Simple
From these first poems I sensed a dread, a fearful apprehension of facing death and mortality. Time slips away in an hour glass with mathematical precision. Humans die away and disappear.
“What is left of time for
me or you?
Subtraction
is the melody of God
as we disappear,
the trickle of kingdoms
in a sand clock.”
Mathematical Calculations
Yet, Olson includes one very strong affirmation of simple faith.
“The Marvelous
is always in
The Crucifix.”
No Question
The tenor of the poems changes distinctly with Spirit Boxes. The poem addresses the untimely death of a friend’s son, and his mother’s way of dealing with her grief. The mother had made boxes and filled them with her son’s childhood toys, baseballs, and books. She tried to capture and hold the spirit of her son, to give him some form of life after death. The poem is a heart wrenching brush with death and mortality. Yet in this poem, and the subsequent poems, the people have names. Olson’s friends and family begin to enter the picture in very emotional ways. Marilyn Stablein, Gary Wilke, Paul, Richard. His wife, Riikka, daughter Lola, and son, Tristan appear on the scene.
Christian holidays enter the picture. Olson utilizes an ingenious technique. The exact center of the chapbook contains two poems, Easter Church Basement, and Christmas. I found it very interesting the two holidays that celebrate the central tenets of Christian faith, the birth and resurrection of the savior, are at the very center of the book. I take this to mean that Olson begins to allow his life and beliefs to center around Christian values.
In Easter Church Basement, Olson makes reference to a second verse from the New Testament, 1st Corinthians 15. In this chapter the apostle addresses the Corinthians, who challenge not only the resurrection of Christ, but also the resurrection and eternal life of believers. With his children playing around him, Olson questions himself on his belief, even though the payoff is eternal life:
“Witnesses to the Resurrection…
do I believe this? A crack
in the wall of death,
a way to go home, home-
so that we may be permanent
together
Easter Church Basement
His poems that follow read like myriad epiphanies, as he embraces his faith and the gifts from God he receives. His love of his wife and children is palpable, and each moment with them seems to be a tiny rapture. This is most evident in Trash Night,
“I love her because I love her,
because she is Lola, because
when she says why daddy why
my heart is an accordion in love w/polka
and we do the hokey pokey
in two step & in three
while Tristan looks out the corner
of his eye at us & is happy, but why?”
Sunday May 4 , 2003 is a particularly poignant poem. Olson, wife and kids visit the local store, where the owner, 80 year old Mr. Stewart, has no wife and kids. His shop will close after he dies. No legacy will follow old Mr. Stewart. I could feel the sadness, but also the gratitude that Olson must feel that he will not be in the same situation when he is 80 years old. And in Winter, life passes through another season and rite of passage, when he mentions that his daughter is now old enough to go to school.
I have an old Peanuts comic taped to my computer monitor. Snoopy sits on top of his dog house with his typewriter, presumably to write a novel that begins: “It was a dark and stormy night.” But Linus approaches and says to Snoopy: “Herman Melville said, to produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme.” Snoopy thinks for a moment, then types out the title of his new novel: “The Dog.” A personal confession of faith, and tales of redemption, eternal life, and rapturous moments, such as I found in Waiting for the Rapture, are indeed mighty themes.
Epilogue
I must explain why I included no comments regarding the title poem, Waiting for the Rapture.
When I read the poem, the first thing that came to my mind was this:
blackbird…….
oh……..
white album…….
oh…….
Beatles……….
Then I read the poem, State of the Union.
“Protestants once lived
a life of service,
but ever since the Sixties
the service has sucked.
I now have a perpetual image in my mind of the Lutheran Surrealist after a Beatles concert, wandering around a parking lot at night, looking for his lost car, and humming to himself:
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
I told you I was quirky.
WW
